First day covers: which ones are worth money?

What a first day cover is

A first day cover (FDC) is an envelope or card with a new stamp, postmarked on the stamp's first day of issue. Most US first day postmarks since 1937 carry the slogan "First Day of Issue"; the American First Day Cover Society (AFDCS) dates it to the 1937 issue listed as Scott 795.

The printed or drawn design on the left side of the envelope is the cachet. A cover with no design is uncacheted. An official FDC is postmarked in the city the Postal Service designated for the issue, or today by USPS cancellation services; a cover cancelled the same day somewhere else is called unofficial.

"First day of issue stamps" are ordinary stamps. A 1970s stamp on a first day cover is the same stamp you would find on any letter from that week. Whatever extra value exists sits in the cover: its age, its cachet and its postmark. For the short definition, see first day cover in our glossary.

How first day covers started

• 1840: The Penny Black was issued on 1 May 1840 but was not valid until 6 May. Some offices, Bath among them, sold it early, and covers postmarked 2 May are known, with a single example dated 1 May.
• 1847: The first US stamps went on sale in New York City on July 1, 1847. The earliest known uses are July 2 for the 10¢ Washington and July 7 for the 5¢ Franklin, so there is no recorded US first day cover for the first issue.
• 1922: The Post Office announced that every new stamp would get a designated first day of issue; until then it seldom named one. The first under the new rule was the 10¢ Special Delivery stamp (Scott E12) on July 12, 1922. Many collectors date modern FDC collecting from the 11¢ Rutherford B. Hayes stamp, issued October 4, 1922 in Fremont, Ohio, a city linked to its subject.
• 1923: George W. Linn, who later founded Linn's Stamp News, is credited with the first commercially printed cachet, for the Warren G. Harding memorial stamp of September 1, 1923. Before that, almost all first day covers were uncacheted.
• 1929 onward: Commercial cachet makers turned FDCs into a mass product. Fleetwood has made cachets since 1929, ArtCraft started in 1939, and the large firms typically printed thousands or tens of thousands of cachets for each US issue.

What most first day covers are worth

The AFDCS, the collectors' society for this field, puts it plainly: "Most common issues since the 1950s are of low value, although not always." It says the same about most addressed covers from the 1960s on and calls most uncacheted covers "of minimal value."

Dealer prices show what low value means. Mystic Stamp Company retails a lot of 2,410 US first day covers from the 1940s to the 2010s for $1,850 and advertises it as "less than $1 per cover." That is a retail selling price. A dealer buying covers pays less, and the AFDCS warns that "dealers buy collections for much less than the replacement value, or retail prices."

The reason is supply. In 2019 Mystic bought ArtCraft's remaining stock of more than 5 million unsold first day covers, after buying Colorano's remaining stock in 2016. When one dealer can hold millions of unsold covers, an ordinary cacheted cover from 1975 is not scarce, however carefully it was kept.

Which first day covers are worth money

The exceptions share a pattern: they are early, handmade, or carry stamps that were expensive to begin with.

• Early covers from the 1920s and before. Covers from the first designated first days of 1922 and 1923, and early cachets such as Linn's, are sought after. Before 1922 the Post Office seldom named a first day at all, so a cover proving use on the first day of sale is unusual and priced one at a time.
• Hand-painted cachets by known artists. Dorothy Knapp often painted only ten or twelve covers per issue. Wikipedia reports that her FDCs typically sell for $200–500. At a Schuyler Rumsey auction in June 2020, a Knapp hand-painted first day cover for a 1943 issue sold for $1,000, and Knapp covers for 1944–48 issues sold for $375 to $575 each.
• High-value stamps and famous flights. The 1930 Graf Zeppelin airmails (Scott C13–C15) were among the highest-value US stamps of their day. At Rumsey in December 2023, a complete set on one flown first day cover sold for $4,000 against a Scott catalog value of $10,000; a matched set of three flown covers sold for $1,600 in August 2022 against a catalog value of $2,900. The AFDCS notes that high-value stamps are generally more desirable than the first-class stamps of the same era.
• Good cachet art and popular subjects. "Good art in the cachet enhances the value of a cover, bad art detracts from it," the AFDCS says, and some subjects stay in demand even when a cover is addressed or uncacheted.
• First cachets. A cachet maker's first commercially produced design is a collecting field of its own, documented in Mellone's encyclopedia of first cachets.
• Postmarks tied to a place. A postmark from a town connected to the subject can multiply value. Wikipedia cites British covers for a 1964 botanical issue posted at Primrose Valley, often worth ten times the same cover with a standard postmark.

Even good covers sell below catalog. In the two Graf Zeppelin sales above, the hammer prices were 40% and 55% of Scott value. Use catalog values to compare covers, not as a price you can expect.

How to check what your first day covers are worth

• Sort by date first. Pull out anything from before about 1940 and anything with a hand-painted or hand-drawn cachet. These are the covers worth a closer look.
• Check the stamp's face value. Airmail, high-denomination and dollar-value stamps on cover are more desirable than standard first-class stamps of the same year.
• Note the cachet maker and condition. Printed cachets from the big makers are common; small-run and hand-painted cachets are not. Stains, tears and heavy toning lower value.
• Use the specialist references. The AFDCS publishes Mellone's catalogs, including the Specialized Cachet Catalogs of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, the first cachets encyclopedia and the Planty Photo Encyclopedia. Dealers also quote Scott catalog values for FDCs.
• Identify the stamp. StampSnap identifies the stamp on a cover from a photo, with country, year, series, denomination and an estimated value range for the stamp itself.

If you plan to sell, the AFDCS offers frank advice: dealers often won't want the albums, and if you sell covers one by one, the better ones will go and you will be left with the covers no one wants. It recommends dealing with members of the American Philatelic Society or the American Stamp Dealers Association, which both have codes of ethics. Our guide on how to sell a stamp collection covers the options.

Can you still get a first day of issue postmark?

Yes. According to the USPS Postal Bulletin of September 2026, customers have 120 days after a stamp's issue to get the first-day-of-issue postmark by mail. You affix the stamp to your own addressed envelope (or include a self-addressed return envelope) with at least First-Class postage and send it to USPS Stamp Fulfillment Services in Kansas City, Missouri, marked "FDOI" with the stamp's name.

Traditional postmarks are free for the first 50 and 5 cents each after that; digital color postmarks cost 50 cents each. The Postal Service also sells ready-made first day covers for new issues. Make them because you enjoy them: as the AFDCS points out, most collectors do this "for the enjoyment, not the investment."